MakerBot Industries – Gigaomhttp://gigaom.com
The industry leader in emerging technology researchThu, 17 Aug 2017 12:00:16 +0000en-UShourly1MakerBot founder Bre Pettis heads back to the garagehttp://gigaom.com/2014/09/22/makerbot-founder-bre-pettis-heads-back-to-the-garage/
http://gigaom.com/2014/09/22/makerbot-founder-bre-pettis-heads-back-to-the-garage/#commentsMon, 22 Sep 2014 18:37:28 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=875038Earlier this month we learned that CEO Bre Pettis was stepping down from his role leading MakerBot. Now we know what he’s going to be doing instead: Going back to his roots and heading up an experimental workshop inside a Brooklyn garage.

The new project, called Bold Machines, has its headquarters on the first floor of an industrial building on a quiet, shady street. The idea behind Bold Machines is to give artists and businesspeople the tools needed to incorporate 3D printing into their projects. It’s a small shop so far, with only four employees. It will be a division of Stratasys, which is the parent company of MakerBot.

What kind of 3D-printing experiments will be taking place at Bold Machines? It’s hard to tell at the moment, as Pettis considers Bold Machines to be somewhat of an incubator. Hopefully, talented makers and designers from both commerce and the arts will flock to his workshop to use its 3D-printing capabilities to make their visions into reality, and that’s why the front of the house is a traditional white-walled gallery space, where Pettis and Bold Machines will be able to put on shows featuring successful experiments.

Margo and her nemesis

One hint as to what Bold Machines might produce in the future can be found on MakerBot’s crowdsourced design repository, Thingiverse. Bold Machines uploaded the files to 3D print a figurine named Margo on Monday. Margo, an “ordinary Brooklyn girl with a workshop under the Brooklyn Bridge,” is the main character in what will, hopefully, one day be a full length film. Currently, anybody with 3D printing capabilities can download the files online and produce their own Margo figurine. According to Pettis, it’s an advanced design, but it’s a straightforward job because a finished Margo doesn’t need extra scaffolding or design elements to support her weight.

Next week, Bold Machines plans to release the files to produce Margo’s nemesis, a hulking businessman chomping on a cigar. “We wanted to launch the Margo merchandise first, in the tradition of Transformers and G.I. Joe,” Pettis said. “We’re looking at what serial content looks like with 3D models.”

Margo before painting

While making a movie may seem to be an unusual application for 3D printing, there’s actually a lot that goes into filmmaking that could be improved by the ability of 3D printers to quickly print iterations of models. The teams behind animated movies often spend thousands of dollars and months of time producing clay figures to scale, a process that 3D printing could streamline. Bringing this idea to its logical conclusion, stop-motion animators could conceivably use 3D printing to animate their films. “Filmmakers are dabbling with user-generated content from geek culture and fan culture. We’re starting with that,” Pettis said.

The Bold Machines headquarters is primarily stocked with MakerBot printers at the moment, but the space will also have several Stratasys printers, which are more expensive, larger, and are targeted towards professionals. The first incoming Stratsys printer in the workshop will use wax, and there there will also eventually be a Stratasys Objet500 Connex3 model available for use. That printer uses PolyJet technology, which allows objects to be printed in multiple materials and colors, which will, in turn, give Pettis and his associates the ability to explore one of the primary Bold Machines focus areas for 3D printing: Custom jewelry.

Pettis calls Bold Machines an “incubator,” but it’s not yet clear what the official business relationship will be between Bold Machines and its partners tinkering in the shop. There aren’t any announced partners so far, but Pettis wants to make his resources available not only to established companies and brands, but also to smaller artists and designers around the city. Conceivably a small artist could use Bold Machines resources and expertise in exchange for a small cut of their business, like Y Combinator or other internet incubators, but an established furniture company (for instance) would need to pay its way.

In the coming weeks, Bold Machines plans to announce a call for submissions for its first gallery show. They’re also looking for people with well-defined projects to partner with. If you’ve got a killer idea, are based in New York City, and need expertise from one of the biggest names in 3D printing, Bold Machines is looking to hear from you. Be warned, they’re not looking for designers who are just getting started in CAD — making 3D printing accessible is more MakerBot’s focus — but are instead looking for ambitious projects, from professionals like architects and furniture designers.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2014/09/22/makerbot-founder-bre-pettis-heads-back-to-the-garage/feed/13D Printing: hype, hope or threat?http://gigaom.com/report/3d-printing-hype-hope-or-threat/
http://gigaom.com/report/3d-printing-hype-hope-or-threat/#respondTue, 11 Mar 2014 12:00:33 +0000http://research.gigaom.com/?post_type=go-report&p=221454/3D printing, or additive manufacturing, has captured the attention of pundits and the public alike in recent years. This emerging technology, which allows end users to create material objects based on digital models, is in the early stages of adoption by businesses, schools and hobbyists, and reports of exciting new innovations and applications seem to appear weekly in the headlines.

Yet despite the hype, there is much still holding back this technology’s full potential. Conflicting standards, proprietary patents and lingering mechanical challenges continue to limit the practical applications for 3D printing, and cast a shadow over its future. While this is a source of frustration for the “makers” who embrace the technology and the entrepreneurs and investors who hope to mainstream it, the obstacles represent a window of opportunity for traditional manufacturing industries to reassess their long-term strategies and to find a place in tomorrow’s economic landscape.

This report will address 3D printing from a variety of angles:

The limits of the technology today, and how will it evolve in the future

What will drive adoption among consumers and enterprises

How 3D printing will change jobs and economies in the U.S. and around the world

How 3D printing will affect traditional industries such as healthcare, toys and apparel, and how companies in these sectors can best prepare

The twelve experts interviewed for this report represent a diverse array of interests and vantage points. Some are executives and entrepreneurs in the additive manufacturing industry. Others work in traditional industries that face potential disruption. Still others are researchers focusing on the law, economics and/or material sciences that underpin this emerging technology. While each point of view is different, they converge on a common vision of the future, and this vision suggests a set of six key recommendations for any company concerned about the future of 3D printing:

Embrace the makers

Reevaluate your supply chain

Give consumers the best of both worlds

Don’t just sell – service!

Protect (and grow) your assets

Don’t fight the future

]]>http://gigaom.com/report/3d-printing-hype-hope-or-threat/feed/0A few thoughts on 3D printing at CES 2014http://gigaom.com/2014/01/08/a-few-thoughts-on-3d-printing-at-ces-2014/
Thu, 09 Jan 2014 00:42:28 +0000http://research.gigaom.com/?p=211241I had some time yesterday to stroll by the 3D printing pavilion at CES. The pavilion, which featured large booths from Makerbot, 3D Systems and others, was considerably larger than last year’s 3D printing space. By my guess, there were 30 or so different 3D printing companies.

Here are some quick thoughts on 3D printing at CES 2014 based on my quick tour:

Invasion of the RepRap machines

Anyone who follows 3D printing knows that the explosion in lower cost desktop 3D printers was in large part due to a project called RepRap project, an open source effort that served as the technical foundation for pretty much every low-cost 3D printer model (including the original Makerbot CupCake printer). The expiration of the FDM patents in 2009 added additional fuel, but much of the original low-end printer momentum started with RepRap.

And now, while not every 3D printer in the market may not use the same exact designs, pretty much most of the new startups I saw yesterday that had sub-$1000 3D printers in some way owed a tip of the hat to RepRap (and let me tell you, there were quite a few of them).

3D Systems the only of the “big two” to cross $1,000 threshold

And while a few of the startups that were displaying lower-cost 3D printing machines, the two big 3D printing companies with major IP – Makerbot/Stratasys and 3D Systems – were showing new printers that were more expensive.

That said, Makerbot is showing its first 3D printer that even gets close, the Makerbot Replicator Mini. The Mini, which will sell for $1,375, offers a much smaller print space and lower print fidelity (200 micron layer resolution vs. 100 micron for the new Replicator model), but at least the company is within sniffing distance of the $1000 price.

3D Systems offered up a new version of is Cube 3D desktop printer, the Cube 3D, which is the first product from the “big two” to dip below $1,000 price point. I still think$500 is really the price point at which we’ll start to talk about “crossing the chasm” for consumer 3D printing, but this was a big step nonetheless.

3D printing services not getting love they deserve

Sculpteo, a 3D printing services company from Europe, had a fairly sizable booth booth but hardly any traffic. No doubt, for most people at CES 3D printing is about low-cost printers, and in fact when I talked to Sculpteo CEO he had a button on this shirt (as did all of the Sculpteo booth reps) that said “we don’t make 3D printers”.

I’ve long been saying the real impact of 3D printing in the next few years will be driven by service bureaus, which is what Sculpteo is, but at CES, no one really cared. Most were interested in printers.

Thingiverse integration into Replicator line was big news

Maybe the coolest thing I saw out from Makerbot was not it’s new line of desktop 3D printers, but the integration of Thingiverse access directly into the device through a built-in LCD. The ability to click through and access 3D designs on the online database without having to use a PC was a big deal and shows how Thingiverse continues to be a strategic weapon for Makerbot (and ultimately Stratasys).

]]>MakerBot’s next goal: enabling 3-D printer-based businesseshttp://gigaom.com/2012/08/27/makerbots-next-goal-enabling-3-d-printer-based-businesses/
Mon, 27 Aug 2012 20:29:42 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=557144MakerBot Industries was already arguably the best known name in the emerging home 3-D printer market with its Cupcake and Thing-O-Matic printers. But the launch of the Replicator printer in January at CES exceeded MakerBot’s best projections and it’s prompting CEO Bre Pettis to imagine even more possibilities with 3-D printing.

Pettis told me in an interview that Brooklyn-based MakerBot (see disclosure below) was hoping to double sales of the Thing-O-Matic, which was first introduced in Sept. 2010. But sales of Replicator have already quadrupled Thing-O-Matic in the last eight months and MakerBot has now almost doubled the total number of printers it has sold with Replicator. Prior to the latest model, MakerBot had sold about 7,500 units. Now, it’s up to more than 13,000 printers sold, Pettis said.

Much of the success boils down to Replicator’s price and ease of use. The tabletop device starts at $1,749 or $1,999 for a model that handles two colors of plastic. That’s for a bigger pre-assembled printer than the Thing-O-Matic, which required 20 to 30 hours to assemble.

With the fast take-off of Replicator, Pettis said his big mission for the next year is to encourage entrepreneurs to build businesses on top of the 3-D printer.

“I want to find ways for people to make money and turn their cutting edge ideas into cash,” Pettis told me. “When you take Americans, who are so innovative and will fail until something works, and put a machine in their hands that make anything, it’s volatile. We will have an explosion.”

Pettis said it’s still early and he’s not saying what kind of businesses can emerge. But he mentioned one user who created an aquarium filter for jellyfish using a MakerBot 3-D printer. I expressed my own interest in creating a modern day equivalent of green army men toys.

Pettis said the economics of home 3-D printing can work for entrepreneurs. A kilogram of plastic starts at $42 dollars and can create almost 400 chess pieces. Now with Replicator, the typical buyer profile is changing. While it used to be hackers and programmers that were interested in previous printers, Replicator now attracts all kinds of customers, from industrial engineers and designers to parents, teachers and hobbyists, he said.

Many are turning to MakerBot’s Thingaverse library of open source 3-D designs. The site now gets 60 to 100 new uploads a day, up from 15 daily submissions before Replicator launched.

Pettis said users are still learning how to utilize their 3-D printers and there will be an education process as consumers understand what’s possible. But he believes that 3-D printers will eventually play a key role in people’s lives and will change the way we think about shopping and manufacturing.

“We’re not used to having infinity at our fingertips, but when people start seeing what are others are doing, it’s going to inspire them,” Pettis said.